


Dossier: The Hero

by isyotm



Series: Tourette's AU [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen, Tourette's Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 03:08:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3553796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isyotm/pseuds/isyotm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miranda had noticed a few things that were definitely <i>not</i> in the file she received on Shepard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dossier: The Hero

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place during Act 1, so Samara and Tali haven't been recruited yet.
> 
> Inspired by [this](http://masseffectkink.livejournal.com/8618.html?thread=41749674#t41749674) Mass Effect Kink Meme prompt.

The door behind him wheezes open, but the footsteps that follow aren’t the familiar dull _thud_ of combat boots. Instead, it’s the lighter, lethal sounding _click-click_ of something sharp. There’s only one person onboard the _Normandy_ who wears such impractical shoes.

“Miranda,” he says, barely resisting the urge to turn the word into a drawl. It’s hard not to let his dislike of Cerberus—the things he saw, the things he heard—color his interactions with the crew. It’s a lot harder with Miranda, who seems to have encased herself in ice and refuses to let anyone melt it.

The only thing keeping him this side of civil is the fact that they, headed by the ice queen herself, brought his friend back from the dead.

“Garrus,” she says.

“What can I do for you?”

“I was wondering how you like the new _Normandy_. I know you had a…history with the SR-1.”

He resists the urge to laugh—no doubt she’d take it personally—but “a history” is an understatement. “I watched it get torn to shreds, if that’s what you mean.”

“Yes, that too.”

He shrugs and reevaluates the holo display glowing in front of him. Something’s messing with the accuracy of one of the port cannons and finding out what it is interests him a lot more than continuing this conversation. “It’s nice. Definitely a step up, according to Joker. He won’t stop talking about those leather seats.”

“And Shepard?”

He flutters his mandibles in attempt to quell a smile at the memory of seeing her again on Omega. He’d been so sure it was the end and then he’d caught sight of her in his scope, shooting her way across the bridge. Leave it to Shepard to show up in the nick of time. “She told me you upgraded her too, but I’m pretty sure I’m still the better shot.”

With that, he thinks the conversation is over, but he doesn’t hear her heels clicking away, or the wheeze of the door opening to let her leave.

“You don’t notice anything different about her?” Miranda presses.

“No?” he says, not really following where she’s trying to go with this. Even the—Oh. “Oh.” This time he can’t help the smile.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees her bristle ever so slightly, probably embarrassed she’s been caught.

“This is about the tics, isn’t it,” he says. It’s not a question.

“Tics?”

“Twitches. Jerks. Whatever you want to call them.” The first time he’d met her in the Citadel, it had freaked him out a little—especially the idea of doing a stealth mission with her; how the hell were they supposed to sneak up on an enemy if she tended to shout at random intervals?—but after seeing the kind of soldier she was, not to mention the charmed life she led, the fear had faded away, replaced by respect. The tics had gone from confusing and off-putting to simple idiosyncrasies, the strange habit of a good friend and a way he could separate the real Shepard from any fake.

Miranda looks a strange mix between relieved and furious. “That wasn’t in her file,” she says sharply.

“It wouldn’t be,” he says absently. He thinks he’s figured out what’s messing up the port canons, but the only fix would throw off the fire power of their aft guns. He scratches around the bandage on his face before opening up another window to test a different configuration. Maybe if—

“What do you mean, ‘it wouldn’t be’?”

He makes a noise of irritation, but it’s too low for Miranda’s hearing and too soft for her translator to pick up. He doesn’t understand why this is such a big deal. “It’s not on any official records.”

He looks over at Miranda in time to see another strange look on her face. This is the most emotion he’s ever seen her display. It’s a little surreal. “So _no one_ knew?”

“I mean the SR-1 crew did. The Council. Ambassador Udina. I’m sure her previous teams had to have known.” Garrus scratches around his bandage again. “She had a tic while Saren was trying to talk to her on Virmire, but I think he thought she was making fun of him. And then he died, so…”

“I should have been told.” She says it as though Garrus is personally responsible for keeping this information from her.

He bites back the harsh retort on the tip of his tongue and instead responds with the more neutral “Why is it so important?”

Instead of answering him, she turns sharply on her heel and clicks her way out.

* * *

“Joker.”

“Hey, Garrus. How are your—” Joker lowers his voice in what Garrus assumes is supposed to be an imitation of his own—“calibrations going?”

“Fine, until Miranda showed up.”

“If you’re trying to get me to trash talk her, you’re going to have to look somewhere else. I don’t bite the hand that feeds me.”

Garrus resists the urge to laugh. It seems like there are three constants in the galaxy—Shepard getting him into trouble, Shepard getting him _out_ of trouble, and Joker making wisecracks. “No, I was just wondering if she’d talked to you.”

“I think I can count the number of words she said to me on one hand. And two of them were ‘Mr. Moreau.’” Joker’s voice gets softer as he adds, “Sometimes I can’t tell if it’s her talking or that damn AI.”

“I mean about Shepard.”

“Oh.” Some of the humor drops out of his voice. “I mean, she _tried_. I didn’t give anything away for free though.”

Garrus snorts. Of course not. “What’d she say?”

Joker’s voice goes higher in an imitation of Miranda. “‘Mr. Moreau, can you tell me more about Shepard? No, I mean the woman _under_ the armor.’ I thought at first she was asking me if we were…you know. Intimate.”

Garrus nearly chokes. What he would give to have been a fly on the wall for _that_ conversation.

“When I finally figured out what she was talking about, I just told her the Alliance figured a special bird like the _Normandy_ deserved a special crew. And then I told her that unless she wanted me to crash into the broad side of an asteroid, she should probably let me fly the ship.”

He expected nothing less. Joker may not know when to shut up, but his loyalty is unwavering and Garrus is glad he was around when Shepard woke up in Cerberus’s clutches.

Of course, he can’t ever say anything like that out loud, especially not to the man in question, so instead he needles him with “Can’t focus with pretty women in the cockpit?” He assumes Miranda is pretty. It’s hard to tell what the human standards for attractiveness are sometimes.

“I’m more worried she’s going to take her shoe off and use the heel to slit my throat.”

“Why do you think I wear all this armor all the time?”

“Holy shit, was that a joke?”

“Don’t you have some flying to do?”

“Yeah, yeah. Enjoy your—” He lowers his voice again—“calibrations.”

“That is not what I sound like,” Garrus says, but the line is already dead.


End file.
